


Signed Papers

by galaxystiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Divorce, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 09:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7043362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxystiel/pseuds/galaxystiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today is the first day that Dean has seen Castiel in weeks. Unfortunately, today is also the day they're going to sign their divorce papers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signed Papers

**Author's Note:**

> _[Translated into Russian.](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5605193/14411706) _

With a heavy heart, Dean looked up at the office building from his position on the bench across the street. By his side, a hand on his shoulder in support, Sam spoke up.

“I could come in with you, you know. Try and reason with him.”

Dean shook his head wearily.

“Cas made his decision, Sammy. He didn’t even want to talk about it. This is the way it is. I was kidding myself to think we were ever gonna end up anywhere but here.”

Sam just nodded, clearly not knowing what to say. Still, he didn’t move, and Dean appreciated that more than anything. He needed his brother by his side more than ever right now. Being served the divorce papers had been the biggest shock of his life and the only thing stopping him from completely falling apart was Sam’s support. He’d already gone through all of the negotiations with his lawyer, hadn’t contested anything. Cas wanted the house, so Dean gave it to him. He wouldn’t have wanted to live there alone anyway.

It had all happened so fast. Dean supposed that uncontested divorces had no reason to drag out. Most of it had just been meetings with his lawyer to sign over the property and to separate their joint bank account. Stupid little details that Dean didn’t care about. It all felt like a business transaction, not losing the man he’d sworn to love until his dying day. The man he hadn’t seen since this whole stupid mess began. The man currently waiting for him inside to finalise their divorce by signing the papers.

“I could still come with you,” Sam offered, one last time. “For moral support.”

Dean shook his head again and gave a weak grin. “One thing I do know is that it ain’t gonna be pretty in there. Best you stay out of it.”

He stood up, feeling Sam’s fingers slip away. The comfort vanished and the world lurched. Dean wasn’t sure how he was still upright when he could feel his world falling apart.

“Tell him the truth, Dean. You can still save your marriage.”

Any answer he could have given would have betrayed just how broken he felt. Instead, Dean just walked forward and entered the building, heading for the receptionist. There was no doubt at all that the truth could save his marriage, but that wasn’t the problem anymore.

The problem was that Dean didn’t want to.

He didn’t hesitate once he reached the office, just pushed open the door and let himself in. Castiel was there, dark circles surrounding his eyes but otherwise completely composed. It made Dean want to laugh and cry all at once – wanting to hug him, kiss him, beg him for forgiveness. He felt the urge to throw himself at Castiel’s feet and tell him everything, for him to realise how stupid this was.

But he was Dean freakin’ Winchester, so he just sat down and stared at his lawyer.

He barely listened to any of the legal jargon. Every so often he caught a word like “separation” and “infidelity” and he mentally flinched, but he refused to let his face show a hint of emotion. He didn’t give anything away. Even now, when his heart was broken, all he wanted was to make this as easy as possible for Cas. For both of them.

Even when the final papers were settled in front of him, and Castiel’s lawyer was reading through the division of their assets.

It only took one sentence for Dean to abandon that plan.

“In return, Mr. Novak has requested that you keep the first edition copy of Brideshead Revisited…”

The pen in Dean’s hand slipped from his grasp and clattered on the table, silence falling in the room at the sound. He turned to Castiel in shock, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“But… I bought you that for our anniversary. You love that book.”

Castiel pursed his lips, barely even bothering to glance in Dean’s direction. His tones were clipped as he replied, “And I no longer have a use for it.”

That was it. Dean officially lost his temper.

“Well, jeez, Cas, it’s not like it has our marriage vows etched into the spine,” he snapped. “I didn’t realise that you wanted to erase every memory of me from your life. Are you going to throw out everything I ever gave you?”

“I have no need for a book that serves as nothing more than a reminder of a failed marriage.” Castiel replied sharply.

“And who failed it?” Dean demanded.

With a roll of his eyes, Castiel got to his feet. “I have no desire to sit here and listen to you blame me for the reason we’re sitting here. Mr. Adler, I’ll call to make an appointment to sign the papers at a later date. Excuse me.”

“Go ahead, do what you’re good at,” Dean called after him, bitterly. “Because all the reservations I had when we started this came true. I was terrified that you’d walk away from me – that one day you’d turn your back on me – and you swore that would never happen. So when all is said and done and the ink has dried, Cas, I want you to remember one thing. You walked away. Not me.”

Castiel whirled around, his eyes dark with anger as he jabbed a finger in Dean’s direction.

“I walked away from a marriage that ended the second you cheated on me with my own _brother_!”

Dean glared at him, fingers curling into fists as he fought past the hurt from the accusation. “No,” his voice broke as he glanced down at the paper that truly signified the end of their marriage. “I didn’t. You never even asked me, Cas, so I never bothered denying it. You were so ready to believe I would shit all over our vows by hooking up with _Gabriel_ of all people.”

He felt a small pang of satisfaction at the stunned look on Castiel’s face. This was all he had now, all he wanted was to make Castiel feel as badly as he did.

“You didn’t… then why the fuck was Gabriel naked in _our bed_ , Dean? Why were you in the room with my completely unclothed brother? Tell me that,” Castiel demanded, folding his arms.

Dean averted his eyes. He’d been guilty of keeping a secret, but he had never cheated on Castiel. Still, owning up to his secrecy didn’t exactly bring him any pleasure.

“Because I gave Sam a key to our place and told him whenever you’d be out of the house. He and Gabriel – they’ve been together again for months, Cas, and I know you told Gabriel to keep away from Sam after how it ended last time, but they wanted to try again. I didn’t know they were hooking up in our bed, or I’d have at least ditched the sheets,” he added, shuddering.

Realisation began to dawn on Castiel’s face, but Dean was done. He couldn’t bear to stick around and deal with any apologies, sincere or otherwise. With a trembling hand, he picked up his pen and signed his name on the paper. It wouldn’t be official until the hearing, but Dean wasn’t going to make it any more difficult than he had to.

“Dean –”

Dean turned and shoved the paper at Castiel, watching as it shot off the end of the table and fluttered to the floor. His lawyer cleared his throat and scurried to pick up the paper before it was trampled on.

“I gave you what you wanted. I didn’t contest the divorce, I gave you the house, everything you asked for. Now I’m asking you for one thing, Cas, just one.”

“You want to know why I thought that you cheated,” Castiel seemed to be relaxing, softening, and Dean couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let him think that this was alright or that it was ever going to be. “I –”

“No.” Dean cut him off, not even wanting to listen. “I don’t care why you were so ready to give up on me, or why you thought I’d given up on you. You made your bed, Cas, when you chose to run away instead of talking to me. There’s only one thing I want from you now, and that’s to never set eyes on you again.”

He left the office, the door slamming behind him. He could feel the blood roaring in his ears, as he numbly put one foot in front of the other. All Dean could think about was that he needed to get out of here, needed to be as far away from Castiel as possible before he lost it. Nobody would ever see him cry over this, not if he could help it. Not even when he felt like his heart was being stabbed repeatedly over and over at the thought of going home to Bobby’s couch.

He left the building, settling on the bench from earlier and burying his head in his hands. He didn’t look up when Castiel sat down beside him, but he knew his husband, knew his warmth, his scent, everything about him. Of course Castiel would have followed him out, it was in his very nature. It was one of the things that Dean had always loved about him.

“Did you sign?” He asked, eventually looking up. Dean still didn’t look at Castiel, just stared straight ahead.

Castiel didn’t answer, not at first. He just folded his hands on his lap and stared straight ahead. “I don’t have a good reason for not trusting you. I guess I was so willing to believe you could cheat on me because I never understood why you even looked twice at me to begin with. Gabriel always makes jokes, about how he snagged the wrong Winchester. I know he’s only joking, that he’ll always love Sam,” he swallowed, his voice breaking, but he composed himself quickly.

“But it stuck in my head. And then you were there, and so was Gabriel and he was naked and I just freaked. I needed to clear my head, to focus on anything except the fact that you were both there, together. And if I’d thought about it clearly, I would have wondered why you weren’t in the bed with him, why you looked like you were going to be sick. But all I could think about was that you didn’t come after me, you just let me drive away.”

Dean licked his lips before answering. It was nothing short of a miracle that his voice came out steady, because he could feel the tell-tale sign of tears stinging his eyes. If he let himself cry, he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Gabriel hopped out of the bed and grabbed my wrist. I was trying to come after you but he was yelling about how you’d be mad he broke his promise. And I figured, yeah, he was right. You’d be mad at him for hooking up with Sam when it’s just going to end in heartbreak again, and you’d be mad at me for knowing about it and letting it happen under our roof. So I let you go, figuring I could explain when you’d had time to calm down and it wouldn’t seem so bad next to you thinking I’d cheated on you.” Dean explained, before letting out a laugh that was more of a sob than anything else. “But you didn’t come home, and the next thing I know, I was staring down at a paper telling me my husband had filed for divorce.”

He looked to his right when Castiel sniffled, tears pouring down his cheeks. He was trying his hardest to hold them back, hand covering his mouth as the other swiped at his eyes. Dean just stared at him, sadly, not having the words or the energy to offer him comfort. He just waited until Castiel got himself under control before continuing.

“I fucked up, Cas, but … I never expected it to go this far.” He turned his eyes back to the front. “Did you sign?”

Castiel produce a sheaf of papers from the inside of his pocket, opening them up. The area for his signature was still blank and Dean felt a pang of something he refused to think about. They were still technically married.

“I screwed up more than you did. I know what I did, and that I can’t ever make it right. You took a chance on me after I swore I’d never leave you and I did exactly that. I love you, Dean,” Castiel told him, shakily. “And I can grovel for weeks, months even. I can promise you to never do anything like this again, but words are just words. I don’t expect you to believe them when nobody in your situation would.”

Castiel swallowed, pulling a pen from his pocket. “But I don’t have the time to convince you that you’re still the best thing that ever happened to me, or that I will make this up to you every day for the rest of our lives if you’ll let me. I hurt you so badly, so this has to be your choice. I’m going to count to ten and then sign the papers, and this will all be over. You won’t ever see me again. But if you think there’s even the smallest, tiniest chance that you could ever forgive me and we could somehow make this work, then stop me from signing.”

Dean bit his lip as he silently counted along with Castiel in his head. He couldn’t think, couldn’t push past the pain in his chest to know what the right thing was to do here. They’d been happy before this, but not having that kind of trust in their marriage was a huge issue. If he stopped Castiel from signing, it would take a lot of work to move forward.

He realised when his time was up and Castiel’s shoulders slumped. The pen lowered to the paper and Castiel scrawled his signature. Dean watched the black ink loop through from the ‘C’ to the downwards stroke of an ‘N’. Without thinking about it, he reached out and plucked the paper from Castiel’s hand, tearing it clean in half.

“Your name is Castiel Winchester.” He muttered, continuing to tear the paper up into as many pieces as possible, before glancing up at Castiel. “We’ll work on it. But I’m not giving up on you yet, Cas.”

He hooked an arm around his husband and in return Castiel’s head gently lowered to his shoulder. They would have to go back inside and work out where to go from here, to begin the process of undoing everything they’d started.

But not yet.

For now, this was a good enough start.

**Author's Note:**

> [MY TUMBLR](http://blueeyedangel.co.vu)


End file.
